Why doesn't Python recognize list element equal to input string?

[julietbrown]

This is a bit embarrassing, but I'm new to Python, and using Python 3.2.

This is the problem code:

#a list of names
Names = ["", "", "", "", ""]
#initialised thus ...
Names[1] = "Fred"
Names[2] = "Jack"
Names[3] = "Peter"
Names[4] = "Kate"

Max = 4
Current = 1
Found = False

#get the name of a player from user
TestName = input("Who are you looking for?")

while (Found == False) and (Current <= Max):
        #next two lines put in in attempt to debug
	print(Names[Current])
	print(TestName)
	print(Names[Current] == TestName)
	if Names[Current] == TestName:
		Found = True		
	else:
		Current += 1
if Found == True:
	print("Yes, they are on my list")
else:
	print("No, they are not there")

#stop the wretched console disappearing
Wait = input("Press any key")

The problem is that Found never gets set to true. If I enter "Jack" for example, on the second time round the loop it prints "Jack" for Names[Current] and "Jack" for TestName, but the condition
if Names[Current] == TestName
stays False, and program goes on looping.

Am I going potty, or is this a bug in the system, or ...? Other tests show True will be returned from the following snippet:

str1 = "Fred"
str2 = "Fred"
print(str1 == str2)

Well, of course! So no problem with string comparison?

Can you help

[dwblas]

It works fine for me. Note that the first letter of the name is capitalized and so the input must also be capitalized. You might want to try"

    if Names[Current].lower() == TestName.lower():

Also, python has style conventions, which state that variable names should be all lower case with underlines (TestName --> test_name)". This helps someone else read your code as you can easily tell that TestName is a class and test_name is a variable. Finally, you can use Python's "in" operator:

if TestName in Names: